MusicFest at Magness Arena, 5/25/13

MUSICFEST @ MAGNESS ARENA | 5/25/13 The Head and the Heart took the Magness stage at around 10 p.m., after the outdoor acts played earlier in the day and the three other groups played the main stage off and on for about three hours. At that point, folks seemed far…

The ten best concerts to see in Denver this week

ZZ WARD @ GOTHIC THEATRE | WEDS, 5/29/13 While riding the bus to school as a child, Zsuzsanna Ward spent her time in headphones, thinking about just how much she wanted to become a singer. As an adult better known as ZZ Ward, she reached the crux of that dream…

Meet Kev Kash, a promising new local rapper

Kev Kash is a rising talent from the local scene who has songs with the likes of Innerstate Ike, Myrical and Mr. Midas. Kash says 2Pac is his biggest influence, but he says his style is comparable to Lupe or Kendrick Lamar. We recently caught up with the rapper, who…

Denver’s ten best Memorial Day weekend shows

THE HEAD AND THE HEART @ MAGNESS ARENA | SAT, 5/25/13 Formed in Seattle in 2009, this project started out playing open mics and within a year after playing countless shows, the Head and the Heart independently released its debut album. The band, whose self-titled album came out on Sub…

The best EDM in Denver this weekend

MOON BOOTS @ NORAD | FRI, 5/24/13 Moon Boots maintains a mysterious persona appropriate for a being who’s allegedly imbued with sentience in a top-secret NASA experiment, but here’s what we know about him: He’s based out of Chicago, he’s signed on the French Express label, and he has a…

So what does Kind of Blue sound like to an admitted jazz novice?

A lifetime of music fandom and a voracious appetite for new things has given me a wide-ranging (if sometimes shallow) knowledge of musical styles, forms and history. Despite that, there are holes. Big holes. And some of those holes are, well, embarrassing. I’ve decided the time has come to fill…

Video: Watch Ghost live at the Ogden Theatre

Okay, so you know how fan-shot videos by all accounts generally suck? Beside the shaky, migraine-inducing footage, the audio is generally awful and sounds like it was literally recorded from the inside of the speaker cone. I think we can all agree that they’re a monumental waste of time for…

Dawn Safari

With its refreshing take on percussion and production, the music on Dawn Safari’s Mask isn’t what you’d expect during the height of bass’s fame. Rather than building up to massive drops, this chilled-out drum-and-bass relies on samples and loops, with nods to hip-hop — but even those are subtle and…

Farmington Hill

Durango’s self-proclaimed country-fried indie-rock act Farmington Hill sums up Road to Nowhere as “music suitable for both a raucous Saturday night and the accompanying Sunday hangover.” Sure enough, some of the five-piece’s twangy alt-country tunes — “Oh Yeah,” “Pass Me the Bottle,” “Pass Out” — could be the ideal soundtrack…

Justin Francoeur

It’s fairly clear from the opening cut of Justin Francoeur’s debut, Moving Through Universes, what an ambitious undertaking the disc was: “Gravity” starts off with a rock groove and gradually works in various worldly elements such as the erhu, a Chinese stringed instrument played here by Brian Mullins. Francoeur clearly…

The Seven Hats

There is something otherworldly and old-worldly about the songs on the Seven Hats’ Scientific American; they’d be right at home on a Guy Maddin soundtrack. Julie Davis’s voice, while in the foreground, sounds like it was captured on film and then played until the film stock was worn to the…